You Must Read The Occupiers’ 325-Page Comment To The SEC

The Occupy people have done a wonderful thing. On Monday, just as the comment period on the new regulation was closing, a subgroup of seven known as Occupy the SEC submitted a 325-page comment to all relevant federal agencies demanding a stricter “Volcker Rule” — the part of Dodd-Frank that aims to limit the amount of proprietary trading, or risky bets made with a firm’s own money (frequently and ultimately meaning YOUR money), in which megabanks can participate.

This is Important, as the comment explains:

Proprietary trading by large-scale banks was a principal cause of the recent financial crisis, and, if left unchecked, it has the potential to cause even worse crises in the future. In the words of a banking insider, Michael Madden, a former Lehman Brothers executive:

Proprietary trading played a big role in manufacturing the CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) and other instruments that were at the heart of the financial crisis. . . if firms weren’t able to buy up the parts of these deals that wouldn’t sell. . .the game would have stopped a lot sooner.

Go read it! We haven’t read the full thing, but we will… later. (No, that’s not even a joke this time. We will read it later! Unless something good comes on the teevee… No but really we look forward to reading it! Maybe…)

About the author

Jim Newell is Wonkette's beloved Capitol Hill Typing Demon. He joined Wonkette.com in 2007, left for some other dumb job in 2010, and proudly returned in 2012 as our "Senior Editor at Large." He lives in Washington and also writes for things such as The Guardian, the Manchester paper of liberals.

Page 261: "In the event the bankster declines decapitation by guillotine, he or she may specify an alternate means of self-destruction, including hanging-and-quartering and death by drowning in a barrel of wine." I read fast!

BaldarTFlagass

Ctrl+F is your friend.

chascates

As a former printer I champion the lengthy verbiage of these printed entreaties but as someone who prizes brevity I think a simple 'QUIT FUCKING US OVER!' would have sufficed.

Geminisunmars

That is the shorter version that goes on the placards.

CapnFatback

Such is the soul of snark.

Guppy

Do they even mail out hard copies of the Federal Register any more?

paris biltong

As he letter notes, "the Proposed Rule was designed to avoid 'definitive bright lines' in favor of a 'more nuanced framework',” the bright line being, as you suggest "Quit fucking us over," of which a more nuanced version would be "Please quit fucking us over."

ph7

Sadly, chascates, I have several friends who are also former printers. Three of them worked together printing maps that delivery drivers used. Remember maps? Another worked in the printing dept of the WaPo. Remember newsprinting?

You mean that buying and selling instruments you know to be shit isn't a good idea? Who'da thunk it?

Generation[redacted]

Are you kidding? It's a great idea! Buying and not selling, on the other hand… you want to make sure you have a seat when the music stops.

http://www.vinoverve.com Maman

Ah yes, everything I needed to know about life I learned in Kindergarten.

chicken_thief

No sweat. AIG will cover your bets.

http://www.vinoverve.com Maman

And reinsure it 40 times while involving every other insurance company in the known world.

Doesn't anyone remember how this behavior ended for Lloyd's of London in the 1980s.

Bezoar

Selling shit, that's a good idea. Buying shit; that's different.

tessiee

Sorta like junk bonds: "With a name like junk bonds, we figured what could possibly go wrong?"

http://www.vinoverve.com Maman

The name gave ME confidence.

el_donaldo

It took 325 pages to explain that "shit is all fucked up and shit"?

And how are they going to do this with the big puppet heads?

mayor_quimby

Somebody's been watching "Idiocracy"…

Harry_S_Truman

Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world.

Steverino247

Mandatory T-shirt purchase right there, Harry. Oh, and good call on the nuking of Japan.

paris biltong

Over a million occurrences in Goggle, yet no one seems to know who said it first. Harry Truman?

tessiee

Give me a bank, and I can buy more books.

BaldarTFlagass

I'm glad that there are people that have the patience to read something like that. And maybe even understand it.

BarackMyWorld

#occupyyourprinter

memzilla

How about we pass legislation to let the 99% of us use the same 40:1 leverage ratio that these scumbags got to use? "Hey look, I got $15,000 in my bank account now!"

chicken_thief

What are these "bank account" things you speak of?!

http://hong-kong-actresses.blogspot.com/ donner_froh

“an unfortunate consequence of the generalized language throughout the Proposed Rule may be the shift of risky practices out of liquid and transparent markets into the less regulated illiquid and OTC products”

Unfortunate consequence seems a bit harsh. Don't forget how well moving shaky/illiquid/insane investments to off balance sheet entities worked for Enron.

paris biltong

"Liquid and transparent" would be gin and vodka, while illiquid stuff you can buy over the counter includes doughnuts, right?

But according to all the Republican candidates Dodd-Frank must be repealed because the regulations are too stringent and are going to ruin the economy! Ignore the fact that underregulation allowed the financial companies to cause the recession in the first place.

Fare la Volpe

Nonsense, Soros. Everyone knows that the free market always works always except when it's being strangled by regulation. Ergo, the only times the free market doesn't work are when regulations made it not work right. That's air-tight hobo logic there.

hagajim

Building a house of fucking cards from turdlike home loans posing as AAA securities was not the cause of the recession, it was those damn loans pushed by the Dems….bwaahaahaaaa. I really wonder how much money these dicks took out of the system during this rampant raping. After the S&L debacle you think we'd remember – but fuck no.

SorosBot

Hell, you would think we should have learned from the Great Depression; but no, Reagan and the Bushes learned nothing from history and doomed us to repeat it.

tessiee

i.e., our only hope for the sinking ship is if we hit another iceberg.

Chichikovovich

This must be a forgery – everyone at Fox says that the Occupy people are just smelly lazy dopes who are only after handouts paid for by the taxes of hard-working Americans.

Fare la Volpe

And rapists; don't forget rapists.

Chichikovovich

Quite correct – I was too quick off the mark. I also forgot "rat magnets".

Technically it is 325 pages long, but most of that is padded out with used hypodermic needles.

GOPCrusher

Damn kids and their reefer sticks.

OC_Surf_Serf

325-pages is about what people had to sign to get a tainted mortgage and buy into our Great American Scheme

MadBrahms

324 of that is language making it impossible to sue, and the other remaining page is just "HA HA" printed over and over to fill the space.

http://simplyleftbehind.blogspot.com/ actor212

Well, now we know how they Occupied Their Time

(see what I did there? Huh? Huh?)

coolhandnuke

"Edit check, edit check, edit check edit check….

JerkCade

or maybe "Spell Check! (Spell Check!)"

http://hong-kong-actresses.blogspot.com/ donner_froh

Banking should be simple: take deposits from savers and pay them X%, loan those deposits to borrowers at 2X%, figure out a reserve for bad loans, fraud or the collateral burns down.

Anyone who can't make money doing that just needs a new career.

ChernobylSoup

Bankers used to live by the 2-4-3 rule.

Pay 2% on deposits,
charge 4% on loans,
be at the golf course at 3.

They would make a lot less mischief that way.

Lascauxcaveman

Yes, but if you follow that formula it may take ten or twenty years to get fabulously wealthy. Who wants to work that long?

tessiee

"Anyone who can't make money doing that just needs a new career."

This reminds me of the part in "The Gang that couldn't shoot straight", where one of the characters had a car dealership that lost money, even though he stole the cars.

http://www.wonkette.com Chillwillard

Teatards are working on a response…as soon as they upgrade their Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS….

BaldarTFlagass

"How come I can't open this document with WordPerfect!?"

tessiee

Because you need Volkswriter on a Kaypro.

GOPCrusher

Wordstar! FTW!

bagofmice

You could get a decent codebehind for formatting on that version!

Schmannnity

John Corzine says there is already too much job killing Volcker Rules.

MissTaken

I know what I'm doing this afternoon!

This comment is 100% snark free.

Chichikovovich

Me too, but I'm not nearly so happy about it.

This comment is 100% snark free.

Edit: Just to be clear – what I'm doing isn't reading the report. Dammit.

SorosBot

A report like this must be like porn for you accountants. And just think, it's work related!

Steverino247

Pssst! Dude! Remind her she doesn't need both hands to read it!

Guppy

I thought you did laundry yesterday.

MissTaken

I *need* to do laundry daily.

Guppy

That's a euphemism for something, isn't it?

paris biltong

I've downloaded it and have reached page 5 of the pdf document. It's either read or comment.

Terry

This is fabulous! Now the SEC is going to have to respond to the comment point by point.

How many answers would be "Yes, we agree with you but Wall Street wouldn't like that very much."?

Mahousu

At the risk of being obvious, "all of them, Katie."

Mahousu

The SEC was all set to read it but, uh, everybody there came down with the stomach flu.

Beowoof

I like the idea of a 325 page report . It says to the 1% we 99% know how you fucked us the last time and we aren't going to let you get away with that again. Go Occupiers. Oh and Brietbart is still an asshole.

GOPCrusher

That and the fact it should shut up the Republiklans/Tea Baggers that keep claiming that the Occupy Movement has no real purpose or demands.

SayItWithWookies

It's awesome that the OWSers are getting down and geeky with this law, since the details of this sort of financial regulatory structure are the origin of the damn 2007-8 meltdown in the first place. And I hope it does them no discred to say that this comes from someone who almost never knows what state his bank account is in.

Radiotherapy

I'd read it, except I'm suffering from a case of the stomach flu.

edgydrifter

DANGER ALERT: Fox says once you get past the first page, the next 324 are filled with subliminal type repeating "Obey Saul Alinsky" and "George Soros Will Decide" over and over on top of a Che Guevara watermark, and that reading it will turn you into an Muslim terrorist! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!

ThundercatHo

Plus, if you read it backwards it's satan telling you to eat your vegetables.

LionHeartSoyDog

I don't know about that, but for some reason i want to eat Selba Tegev.

BaldarTFlagass

Roddy Piper has a pair of glasses that let you just plain fucking see all that shit right out in the open.

Generation[redacted]

And he's all out of bubble gum…

tessiee

too bad we weren't all wearing them in 1980.

orygoon

Tell Fox News to just lie back and enjoy it.

tessiee

Fortunately for all of us, there's a built in safeguard of preceding the propaganda with several pages of "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".

paris biltong

The SEC asked for "commenter input". Imagine what would happen if Wonkette got a 325-page comment.
Also, from what I've seen over the past few years, the staff at the SEC seems far too dim and/or lazy to make any sense out of this document.

Guppy

A Wonkette comment extended to 325-pages would be a trashy homoerotic romance novel.

bagofmice

Remember remember the 5th of blowvember.

LionHeartSoyDog

Too dim, lazy and/or corrupt…

James Michael Curley

The last time I read anything which had close to 325 pages it started "It was love at first sight" and ended "The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off."

Geminisunmars

I just can't snark. This has me too thrilled and excited. Power to the 99!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30500320@N06/ DerrickWildcat

But Obama wants to make us all use rubbers which is SOCIALISM!!!

Oblios_Cap

Bring back Glass Steagall!

Radiotherapy

I hate Phil Gramm.

coolhandnuke

For fucks sake, occupy a red pencil…even the Unabomber's Manifesto was only 50 pages.

Baconzgood

Un-related to this post

Bacon's Ma is sick… Baconz pretendz to be sexists and racist, but that is just for the snarky….Baconz Ma made Baconz who he iz today…… Baconz ma said "Be odd. Odd is where it's at! At Neil Simon once said 'never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity'. That's good advice Baconz. Goof off more and you'll find a good lady"

slithytoves

Slithytoves wishes Baconz Ma wellness, as her Ma taught her how to be outraged at and in love with the world at the same time, as well as be weird enough to make people laugh.

And Mr. Happy sends his good, innocent cat wishes for health, too.

Baconzgood

"always be strange" as my ma said. My grand dad said "If you can't laugh at a crippled italian midget then you can't laugh at your self". We came from a wise family.

tessiee

So I'm inferring that your grandpa was a crippled Italian midget?

Baconzgood

Green Irish! "You want things done lad you ask Shinn Fein! The IRA never get's shit done" I suspect he might of came to this country under shady circumstances.

fuflans

wishing your mum many years of jameson and joyce.

James Michael Curley

Wishing your ma good health. But cut down on the sodium and phosphates.

Baconzgood

She thanks ya. She is a strange woman. If she knew how to ues the inter web she'd like Wonkette. She liked the Jesus Lizard when I took her to a show on mother's day.

Steverino247

Get well soon, Bacon's Ma!

Baconzgood

Baconz Ma thanks you. She's a neat lady. I was a latch key kid before it was cool.

Steverino247

I was kept chained in a dungeon, but we don't talk about it.

Baconzgood

Would you like to share? 'Cause you can go on Yahoo & do that.

Biff

Best wishes of health to your Ma. My own mother once had me arrested for owning 4 reefers, from which I learned some valuable lessons, too…

Baconzgood

Ma don't know what "reefers" are. She calls the reefers "goof balls". She is addicted to sudafed though. But that use to be OVC.

http://www.southsidejohnny.com/ Jukesgrrl

My Pa told me to stay away from angel dust pasta. Pass that good advice along to your Ma. I want her to get better.

MozakiBlocks

Good thoughts for your Ma.

BaldarTFlagass

Maybe Prezident Obama can visit Baconz Ma since he can't see Scott Walker.

Seriously, best wishes and good luck with that.

Baconzgood

OLDZ LIBLE!!!!!!

MissTaken

Feel better soon, Ma Baconz!

Baconzgood

It means alot from you MissTaken. I gotta a crush on you. (don't tell LimeyLizzy though)

MissTaken

Ah shucks!

**blushing**

SorosBot

*Adds Baconz to the watch list*.

Baconzgood

STALKING LIBLE!!!!!!!!!!

Radiotherapy

Not bad for a group of unwashed, pot-smoking, murderer, rapist, hippies. Eh, Mr. Brightfart?!??

http://www.southsidejohnny.com/ Jukesgrrl

Isn't it a wonder they could take time out from their crime spree to type 325 pages?

CommieLibunatic

Proprietary trading? Is that what it's called? I think I heard about that on Ira Glass's show years ago.

And it's about fucking time that people started paying attention to these schemes. You would think that banking instruments being compared to a Mel Brooks musical would get more traction in the press.

An_Outhouse

Maybe if those Occupy losers would get a job, they wouldn't be killing trees creating a 325 page bitch session. Get a hoverround, dammit, and go clean up a parking lot.

MozakiBlocks

"let me explain, no there is too much. Let me sum up!"

SorosBot

This deserves another thumbs up.

http://simplyleftbehind.blogspot.com/ actor212

Does it have porn? Cuz if it doesn't have porn, I don't want to sit through 325 pages.

Even just a little furry action. That's OK.

Generation[redacted]

Participating in the rule-making process by submitting extensive public comments, in hopes to effect change in how government works?

Wouldn't it be more effective just to gather a bunch of people in costumes, carrying guns and misspelled signs expressing vague outrage at an imagined loss of freedom?

tessiee

If by "effective", you mean, "corporations throwing ass tons of money at them", then yes.

Sassomatic

These kids need to take a shower and get a job, then they would't have time to sit around "commenting" on things that are none of their business, like the economy.